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Quitting smoking substantially reduces smokers' risk for smoking-related morbidity and mortality and can increase life expectancy by up to a decade. Most smokers want to quit and make at least one medical provider visit annually. Health care providers can play an important role in helping smokers quit by documenting patients' tobacco use, advising smokers to quit, and providing evidence-based cessation treatments or referrals for treatment, but many providers and practices do not regularly take these actions. Systems to increase provider screening and delivery of cessation interventions are available; in particular, electronic health records (EHRs) can be powerful tools to facilitate increased cessation interventions. This analysis reports on an EHR-based pay-for-improvement initiative in 19 community health centers (CHCs) in New York City (NYC) that sought to increase smoking status documentation and cessation interventions. At the end of the initiative, the mean proportion of patients who were documented as smokers in CHCs had increased from 24% to 27%, whereas the mean proportion of documented smokers who received a cessation intervention had increased from 23% to 54%. Public health programs and health systems should consider implementing strategies to equip and train clinical providers to use information technology to increase delivery of cessation interventions.

Vaccination Coverage Among Children in Kindergarten — United States, 2013–14 School Year -- Increases in Smoking Cessation Interventions After a Feedback and Improvement Initiative Using Electronic Health Records — 19 Community Health Centers, ...

QuitWorks is a Massachusetts referral program that links health care organizations, providers, and patients to the state's tobacco cessation quitline and provides feedback reporting. Designed collaboratively with all major Massachusetts health plans,...

"CDC has a long history of monitoring the use of clinical preventive services to provide public health agencies, health care providers and their partners information needed to plan and implement programs that increase use of these services and improv...